What is "Mind?"

To me, this goes back to the difference between "everything" we perceive and perception itself, which is what Mike is driving at.

What Healje is apparently driving at is a physical process that he can re-engineer back to physical fundamentals in the brain, and which he can play forward in an increasingly complex step order arriving at "everything you consciously perceive."

In this way, perception itself is held as an emergent quality of this physical step process to which awareness is unaware.

It's telling to note that hard science can take us far up this ladder of complexity, but stops dead at the threshold of awareness, which is sometimes described as the emergent result of data processing, of all that locomotion going on "under the hood."

It's worth noting that this belief is not drawn from examining the phenomenon itself, but rather the physical processes believed to "create" it. This strategy has worked wonderfully so long at the phenomenon in question is observable - that is, with every other phenomenon in reality other than perception.

For starters, I have never advocated a Panpsychic take on anything.

You seem convinced that you can scientifically demonstrate how the subconscious mind creates ("in our having") awareness. How so?

What's more, you insist that quantification (science) derived from directly measuring observed phenomenon does NOT stop dead at the threshold of awareness, which you posit as an emergent phenomenon (again, emergence is not scientific) arising out of a highly complex and distributed physical system, including the subconscious mind. In what manner do you propose to cross the threshold by way of quantifications?

It is this sticking point that leading neuroscientists have repeatedly said, in so many words, "we have no idea what a scientific model would even look like."

Whatever model you have in mind, it ain't going to be scientific as we normally use the word. I'm not convinced you understand exactly what that means.

This to me is not a matter of crossing some theoretical "gap" in our understanding, because that assumes that a step process up a theoretical ladder of complexity and distribution "explains" consciousness - once we close the "gap."

the mind predicts a physical motion, like raising one's arm, and the body reacts in a way that minimizes free energy

Again, you have theories. Is there anything else that you have?

A is Identity theory.

B The brain creates content. I've said that all along. You won't win many logic contests arguing the virtues of complexity and emergence while at the same time arguing that higher levels of complexity are not sourced (or if you like, created) by lower levels. Your use of the word "dependent" implies both a step process AND a forward causal chain, otherwise you could confidently say that the unconscious mind is dependent on awareness, and that less complex functions "emerge" from phenomenon with greater complexity - and you clearly are not saying that.

C You can see the emergence of increasingly complex brain function (content production) in evolutionary terms, but not the fact that we are aware of same. If you could, you could demonstrate how a species went from no awareness to being aware, strictly in terms of quantifications derived from observable phenomenon. We can observe what we think is the presence of awareness in others, but we can find no empirical proof of same through investigating the brain itself. That's the rub.

Now if you were to say you have studied the brain scientifically, and like IIT, decided to launch into speculation about being conscious, that would be one thing, and I applaud you for the effort. But your speculations will not themselves be scientific because they will not be measurements directly drawn from observable external phenomenon.

Yes, we can say that baby over there appears to be conscious, and her brain output we can observe developing over time. But awareness itself never changes because it is not a thing that can ever be anything but what it is.

What is the interplay between natural selection and sexual selection in the evolution of humans in general and you or me in particular?